On the road
by frozen-delight
Summary: In which a concussed Dean meditates on shoes and cars and Sam is pissed. [Written for the prompt: "After living with the MoC for over a year, Dean's got used to being a little bit superpowered. Without it, he totally overestimates the number of monsters/other bad guys he's able to take on, and gets the crap beaten out of him." Sam&Dean gen.]


A/N: Written for anactoria's prompt: _After living with the MoC for over a year, Dean's got used to being a little bit superpowered. Without it, he totally overestimates the number of monsters/other bad guys he's able to take on, and gets the crap beaten out of him. Comfort optional, but no Wincest, please._ at the S10 comment!fic meme over at the  spn_bunker.

Unbetaed, apologies for any mistakes.

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 **On the road**

There was a dull rumble under his head when Dean blinked his eyes open. The first thing he saw was the blurry shape of the back of Sam's head on the seat in front of him, while he, huh, was lying in the backseat.

"Dude, why are you driving my car?" The words came out rough and strangely slurred.

There was a sharp sound and Sam's head whipped around. From his position, Sam's face seemed absurdly large, so he laughed. The sound hurt in his throat. He blinked again, trying without success to bring Sam's smudged features into clearer focus, but it didn't matter, because he would have recognized that pissed expression anywhere, even in a guess-the-picture-game with only one tiny revealed tile.

A bottle of water materialized in front of his face.

"Drink that." Sam sounded pretty pissed, too.

He lifted his arms to grab the bottle. Somehow even that little movement hurt.

He took a large gulp of water, then let his head slump back on the seat. It was pounding.

"Careful, man!" he whined. "Stop driving my Baby through every chuckhole in the state."

Sam made an exasperated noise. "I'm not driving at all, I just stopped the car, and if you didn't have a big bloody concussion you'd notice that it's not your car at all."

Dean lifted his head a little, gazing around, dazed. "Where's my car? Dude, where is it?"

One of Sam's hand pushed him firmly back down. "Keep still, goddammit, Dean! What part of being concussed do you not understand?"

Actually, there was precious little he understood at the moment. Somehow Sam was driving, but not their car, and not right this instant, and somehow Dean couldn't really tell if they were moving or not, because everything was dizzy and he felt as though he'd been pressed through a meat grinder. None of which made any sense.

The emotion must have shown on his face, for Sam's belligerent expression softened slightly.

"I don't know where you left the car, okay, since you took off without me, and you probably don't remember right now either, so just let me take you back to the motel, and we'll come get her tomorrow, okay?"

Dean nodded and immediately winced. "So you hotwired this one, huh? We'll make a proper criminal of you yet, Sammy."

Sam didn't seem in any way pleased by this observation. "Not like you gave me another choice." He took a deep breath. "How could you go after those vamps on your own, Dean?"

"What vamps?" He couldn't remember a thing. Possibly Sam was right about the whole concussion thing.

"The nest we were hunting. There were four of them, why the hell didn't you wait for me?"

A searing pain flashed through his temple and Dean briefly had to close his eyes. "Hey, I took out six vamps on my own, dude, it's not like –"

Before he could finish the sentence, Sam cut in sharply, "But that was when you still had the fucking Mark of Cain on your arm, Dean! You're not Superman, not anymore, you need to get used to that!"

 _Dude, I was never Superman, I was always Batman,_ Dean wanted to correct him, but his tongue wouldn't obey quickly enough, and then he heard his brother suck in a harsh, wet breath – and all thoughts scattered from his concussed brain but _Sammy's upset. Find what upsets Sammy and kill it._

Except he felt pretty sure that what upset Sam this time was Dean himself.

"They hit you on the head with a crowbar and I…" Sam's voice wavered. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm not." It was meant as a comfort.

Sam huffed out something that might have been intended as a laugh. "Believe me, I got that as soon you puked all over my shoes."

Dean didn't remember that part either. Instead, a memory of a nine-year-old Sam popped up at the back of his fuzzy mind, a little boy with sore, swollen feet, sitting on the doorstep to their motel room crying quietly, because his worn sneakers were two sizes too small. "Sorry."

"S'okay," Sam told him wearily and turned back to face the front. "Now shut up and let me drive."

Obediently, Dean zipped his mouth shut and closed his eyes again. Listening to the unfamiliar purr of the engine, he decided that he'd buy Sam a new pair of shoes, nice ones, comfortable ones. The strange car sounded so utterly indifferent to the fate of Sam's shoes it was insulting; like the monotonous ramble of that douchy high school teacher who'd wanted to involve CPS, just because he considered it part of the job, not caring in the slightest that he was threatening to tear a family apart.

Something nagged Dean about the whole situation, but what with his head throbbing as if it were about to explode into fireworks like in that movie, Kingsman, it took him a while until it suddenly struck him: _Strange car. Sammy._

These past months, Sam had kept driving around in stolen vehicles, each one more ugly than the last. And Dean had been too busy battling the Mark to pay attention.

Knowing Sam, and if there was one thing Dean knew, it was his little brother, he'd probably even been cunning about it, not just picking whichever car was closest to the bunker, but taking the bus into the next town first, so that the neighbors wouldn't get suspicious.

The idea of Sam cramped in a bus seat, Sam cramped behind the steering wheel of an old clunker was thoroughly depressing.

Their lives sucked enough as it was. At the very least his little brother deserved something better than a crappy hotwired minivan.

"Sam," he began.

"I thought I told you to shut up," Sam said curtly, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Clearly, Dean hadn't been forgiven yet for his failed solo adventure.

"When we get back to the bunker, I'm gonna fix you up one of the cars in the garage, what do you say?"

He might no longer be able to take down four vamps on his own, but he could still make sure his little brother drove around in some decent wheels.

"Okay," Sam said simply. He didn't tell Dean to shut up again, so Dean took that as a good sign.

"Fan–" he groaned against the pain in his temple, "– _damn_ –tastic. 'Cause you have a really embarrassing taste in cars, dude."

Sam actually laughed this time, and Dean felt light-headed then, even giddy, in a way that he figured had nothing to do with his concussion.

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